Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

I’ve ranted before on my thoughts regarding the time travel in this film. The short of it is: I think Kate and Leopold did it right. It did it better than Terminator, better than Back to the Future, even better than H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. No need to go into detail again. I’ll post links to that rant at the end if you absolutely MUST read it.

The Kate and Leopold movie itself however is a wonderful film, especially if you regard it as a Wolverine installment. It features Hugh Jackman AND Liev Schreiber! That’s Wolverine and the GOOD Sabertooth. So he came from a Not-so-great Wolverine film that $&@#%kerd up Deadpool real bad but that’s just an alternate universe, right? Hooray for alternate universes; excusing mistakes clear back to the dawn of filmmaking!

Kat & Leo had really great character building that happened through interesting situations instead of dialogue. They did that right too. The scene at the bar was essentially a comparison between Leopold and Kate’s brother. Sure there was dialogue but no one was explaining who they were. The characters were demonstrating who they were through words and actions. The whole movie is like this. It’s a breath of fresh air to watch something so well written, performed, and filmed. Although I was recently watching Star Wars Episode III with my son so maybe I’m biased.

Liev’s character has some weird expository lines spoken to random unconcerned extras which makes him come off as crazy. That’s probably why they (gnomes) had him play the crazy card a bit. But that felt like a bit of a cop out just having him stuck in a hospital bed spouting exposition to nobodies, especially considering his concerns were eventually proven wrong. Ultimately either his scenes were unnecessary or his character needed to stay more closely involved with substantial characters throughout the film to make his wrongness more of a significant revelation.

I appreciated the scene where Bradley Whitford’s character was trying to woo (for lack of a better word) Kate and saying things like “You’re like one of the guys.” I won’t generalize but I can understand the appeal of a rough and tumble woman who’s not afraid to burp and get dirty. Kate was a charismatic go-getter and Brad admired that about her.

Nevertheless, Kate was putting up all the signs that she wanted someone to be respectful and treat her like a lady. She grew up with a clueless brother and was probably tired of wrasslin’ with him.

But then she meets Leopold who is just TOO refined yet oddly captivating at the same time. The complexity of the characters and their respective desires is so well written and fascinating. How it all comes together is brilliant. And they get time travel right too! Of all the movies to do it right…

By the way, you may have guessed, but I’m no actual authority on time travel. This is the version that just makes the most sense to me personally. For actual authoritative speculations on time travel read Stephen Hawking or someone like that.